The most successful managers are self-aware and know how to adapt to their audience. They communicate clearly and with appropriate candor. They coach and mentor to develop the people around them so that everyone can deliver great results. This is an overview course of the SPSCC leadership development certificate, clarifying the full scope of what it means to be a manager and a leader. It shows participants their strengths and sets them on a clear path to overcome their challenges. Participants will leave the program with an action plan to implement what they’ve learned.

Performance Objectives: Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:

• Define and understand the difference between leadership and management and the necessities of each.
• Maximize time by implementing tools and templates for repetitive management tasks.
• Understand the primary competencies required for leadership success.
• Identify your personality style and how it relates to your workplace or team.
• Recognize personal differences that can cause frustration and create power struggles.
• Discuss the benefits of improved communication quality between individuals and groups.
• Understand your role as an effective conveyor of mission-critical information.
• Improve your ability to get others efficiently doing the right work, with the right intentions for the organization, its customers, and employees.
• Learn your leadership strengths and create strategies to manage your challenges.
• Increase your confidence expressing yourself in groups.
• Leave the course with an action plan to implement what you’ve learned.

Most employees spend too much time in conflict situations, while managers spend too much time putting out fires that could have been prevented with better planning and more deliberate actions. These events collide to create a constant strain for managers. This course gives you the tools to better manage yourself so you are less drained and more present and thoughtful in your responses. It clarifies processes for handling conflicts head on before they become too hot to handle, and provides practice in communication skills for turning difficult situations in to win-wins most of the time.

Performance Objectives: Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:

• Assess your emotional intelligence, understand why it matters, and learn how to improve it.
• Practice deeper stress reduction to better manage your triggers.
• Discover how conflicts are shaped by expectations, perceptions, and lifelong coping patterns.
• Recognize the link between feelings and behaviors.
• Identify your most often used conflict response strategies and communication styles.
• Implement an interest-based approach to help both sides get their needs met.
• Have the right conversations, with the right people, in the right ways.
• Communicate in ways that leave others feeling uplifted.
• Recognize ways to allow everyone in conflict to 'save face'.
• Use components of various conflict resolution processes when mediating impasses.
• Practice using tools to have difficult conversations in productive ways.
• Practice rehearsing how to face your next conflict head on.

Intended audience: Mid-level managers, team leads, and supervisors who want to improve their ability to influence positive organizational outcomes.